Be warned that this article contains major spoilers for the story and endings of Silent Hill 2.
Start a conversation with anyone about the survival horror genre, and Silent Hill 2 will inevitably come up in discussion. Konami’s beloved game was lauded for its impeccable sound design and ambience, not to mention its gut punch of a story that still resonates with fans to this day. But the story isn’t the only thing that’s made Silent Hill 2 so special. There’s always been something about this game that’s indescribably eerie, and I think that has to do with the way the game handles its multiple endings.
Before this, we got the OG Silent Hill. Getting the Good+ ending was simple enough. All you needed to do was make sure to complete a couple of optional quests before a certain point in the story, grab that Unknown Liquid, then use it to save Cybil. Boom. You got the best possible ending. Done and dusted.
With Silent Hill 2, however, things aren’t so simple. The ending system in this game feels nebulous, and it’s no easy task trying to determine which ending you’re on track to getting. Doing something as innocuous as examining a knife, for instance, could potentially mean the difference between getting the Leave ending or the In Water ending.
With the way Silent Hill 2 tallies up its points based on your actions to determine which ending you get, it always feels like the game is watching you somehow, judging you. And that’s a scary feeling that you can never quite shake once you know how this system works.
It’s worth pointing out that the Leave ending is the easiest to get. This is likely the ending you got when you played through Silent Hill 2 for the first time, and it’s the one that most players will get if they play the game casually without looking anything up. In this one, James and Laura leave the town peacefully, as James comes to terms with what he’s done and accepts it. The implication being that his story doesn’t need to end in more death and there’s hope for him yet.
It makes sense for this to be the canon ending. After all, the game wants you to leave with happy thoughts and some sense of optimism after a whole journey of pain and destruction.
The other endings, however, are a lot less happy clappy. The requirements for the Maria ending are a little tougher to meet, but not undoable. Getting this ending requires you to really babysit Maria and ensure that nothing too bad happens to her. You’ll want to stay close to her as much as possible, check in on her as often as you can, and somewhat hilariously, make sure you don’t bump into her by accident too many times.
Meet these requirements, and you get the Maria ending, where she leaves the town with James. It’s not all sunshine and roses, though, as we see Maria coughing in the final scene, implying that she’s doomed to suffer the same fate as Mary, and the cycle continues. Getting this ending requires you to be really conscious of how you behave around Maria, and the game wants to see that you truly care for her wellbeing and are making the effort to protect her. Who in their right mind would keep trying to check on her even after she’s presumed dead in the labyrinth? Only someone who really cares about her, of course.
Do all of that, and the game rewards you with the Maria ending. Performing these actions implies that James, the character, feels a deep bond and sense of attachment to Maria. He wants to right his wrongs; he wants to protect her to make up for killing Mary. His actions are a reflection of his psyche, and it makes sense for the player to get the Maria ending if the criteria is met.
Finally, the In Water ending is the hardest one to get in Silent Hill 2 because it requires you to play James in a way that would likely be very far removed from how most players would want to approach this game. To put things simply, to get the In Water ending, you need to play James, the character, as someone who no longer has any regard for his own life.
There are a few tangible checks for this ending, such as reading a diary, listening to a conversation, and reading a message in Neely’s bar, but the last requirement is a huge ask. To get the In Water ending, you need to have James at critical health for most of the game. To increase your chances of getting this ending, you can also have him examine Angela’s knife multiple times. And what do we know of Angela at this point? That she’s looking for another way to commit suicide.
To have James stay at critical health for most of the game means being reckless. It means you’re not afraid of taking damage and staying that way without thinking about using a healing item. When you take all of these requirements into consideration and read between the lines, it means you’re playing James as someone who wants to die to atone for his actions. And that’s exactly what the In Water ending is.
This ending has James drowning himself in Toluca Lake, which is just about the darkest possible way you could end this game. Whereas the Maria ending symbolized control—James is refusing to accept Mary’s death after all and wants a fresh start with Maria—the In Water ending symbolizes a complete lack of care and agency. James isn’t able to let go of Mary, and he can’t bring himself to move on either, so his only option is to join her in death.
To reduce it to the most technical terms, Silent Hill 2‘s endings are based on a points system. Do a bunch of things correctly, and you’ll get points that lead you towards a certain ending, and so on and so forth. But it’s the way that these points are accrued that makes this game stand out. The requirements are well in line with what James’ psyche would and should be in order to reach a particular ending, and that makes those endings hit that much harder.
Silent Hill 2 didn’t just shoehorn in multiple endings for the sake of it. These endings are very intentional, and they serve as an appropriate reflection of what the player wants to get out of the story. It’s not just a matter of “complete all the quests to unlock the true final boss”; instead, it’s a game that gives you the exact ending that you deserve, based on how you’ve chosen to play the game. Perhaps that’s the true horror of Silent Hill 2.
The Silent Hill 2 remake will be available on October 8. Pre-orders are available now.
Published: Sep 11, 2024 08:21 am